I got most of that ironed out except maybe the flamer. The changes can be found here. The one big difference is I removed Hironaru's changes to some of the scavenger structure armors and the mg base stats.

So I notice that machine guns seem less effective against buildings, I take it this is a deliberate change to make machine guns less overpowered.

What did you actually change, the modifiers against buildings as well as making scav buildings a bit tougher ?

I notice that the repair turret seems to be dropping from the scav power plant instead of the tank factory not sure if this is a deliberate change or a glitch but seems like it might be a glitch because normally the artefact always drops from the tank factory and it seems a little odd to find a tank turret in a power plant? the same goes for the MG upgrade from the second base that seems to drop from the turret again not sure if that's deliberate or just a glitch.

Flamers I think still need a little bit of work, not sure if the damage just needs to be a bit higher or if DOT simply needs to apply the damage a bit faster or perhaps a bit of both because they still seem a little slow, at what speed does the flamer dot tick ? One tick per second, if so then maybe try it at 1 tick per ½ a second failing that we could perhaps try increasing the damage slightly from say 6 to 8 but given that you get flamer damage upgrades at the first base on alpha 2 I think we should be careful about increasing the base damage of flamer to much or they will end up overpowered, although given that machine guns have a base damage of 10 conceivably flamers could have there damage set at 10 as well without ending up more powerful then machine guns I guess it would depend on the modifiers although as far as modifiers go the way I see it flamers should probably be more effective against buildings where machine guns should probably be more effective against units, as that is more realistic.

@alfred007, saves are now safe in campaign missions again (the Qt reduction branch was merged). No more crashes when there are missions with reinforcement transporters or trucks. I have run every campaign related script (except rules.js) though a linter and removed all warnings from scripts (only libcampaign has a few remaining). I tested everything myself and saw nothing wrong, though I'll leave this here if you want to do a few quick tests also.

Bethrezen wrote:
So I notice that machine guns seem less effective against buildings, I take it this is a deliberate change to make machine guns less overpowered.

Yes.

Bethrezen wrote:
What did you actually change, the modifiers against buildings as well as making scav buildings a bit tougher ?

The kinetic armor of the scavenger factories/generators/walls/towers are back at 7 (from 5) with 50 hitpoints removed (Hironaru subtracted 100, but I thought that was a bit extreme) and set the MG stats back to the original values. Now, in regards to the above mod I made flamer modifiers stronger against soft/medium structures higher, reduced ROF a bit, and increased the range by 0.3 tiles. Damage up to 7, firepause up to 8, and range up to 580. Visual representation of flamer changes

Bethrezen wrote:
I notice that the repair turret seems to be dropping from the scav power plant instead of the tank factory not sure if this is a deliberate change or a glitch but seems like it might be a glitch because normally the artefact always drops from the tank factory and it seems a little odd to find a tank turret in a power plant? the same goes for the MG upgrade from the second base that seems to drop from the turret again not sure if that's deliberate or just a glitch.

I made it so artifacts can, potentially, grant multiple research technologies now. Removed the drops from the other structures.

My only concern for flamer is that if we buff it too much it will probably get way too OP when given all those flamer upgrades on Alpha 2 which is why I reduced its base ROF.

Then stagger the damage upgrades over the first few levels because the first 4 levels you are only fighting scav's so don't need a lot of damage upgrades but once you get to alpha 5 you will need the damage boost because New Paradigm units / structures are a good bit tougher then scav's

for the flamer what i think we first need to do is establish a decent baseline that way when we start adding upgrades its performance will keep paces with that of machine guns, that way flamers will always remain a viable alternative machine guns

I mean ultimately once you get to about alpha 06 flamers become largely obsolete because you have mortars which are better for taking down structure and you have rockets which are better at taking down units, but I feel like even though they are maybe not the optimal choice they should still be a viable choice and should still have good enough performance that they don't instantly become useless like they are right now in an unmodded game.

[edit]
btw which mod do i download camBalance.wz or updated-campaign.wz ?

Then stagger the damage upgrades over the first few levels because the first 4 levels you are only fighting scav's so don't need a lot of damage upgrades but once you get to alpha 5 you will need the damage boost because New Paradigm units / structures are a good bit tougher then scav's

Yeah, that is probable for the best. One damage upgrade in Alpha 4 and other in Alpha 5 (scav factory) is what I was thinking. At least the flamer will be useful for something, rather than simply be forgotten about.

Bethrezen wrote:
btw which mod do i download camBalance.wz or updated-campaign.wz ?

camBalance.wz. The other one is just employs better practices to remove some warnings.

Ok so just noticed a couple of things first off building flamer units costs 85 where machine-guns only cost 55 so i think the cost of flamers should be reduced.

second I though something was a bit funny about flamers and it seems I'm right because burn damage is broken and neither units nor structures are not taking burn damage, now to rule out an issue with flamers specifically i used the give all cheat and built a single phosphor bomber and then had it force fire against my own buildings and while the building took damage from the initial impact of the bombs the building took no damage from being on fire, i also tried having my flamers force fire on both my units and buildings and again they only took damage when actually being shot as soon as i stopped shooting they stopped taking damage, this is incorrect a unit or structures that is on fire should continue to take damage for a short period of time till the fire goes out.

so it seems like we'll have to halt balancing for now till you figure our why burn damage is not working, it doesn't seem to be an issue with the mod because even when i delete the mod and then start a new game used the give all cheat and then again build a phosphor bomber and had that force fire on my own factory its still only taking damage from the impact of the bombs and not from being on fire.

[edit]
just tried loading the current release version and it seems burn damage is broken on that to so looks like its been broken for a while, its just no one noticed since flamers where always useless. I'm going to try some of the older version see if i can figure out when this got broken.

[edit]
Tried an old version of warzone i had laying around v3.1.1 and it seems even as far back as that burn damage wasn't working properly.

[edit]
Ok so even in v1.10 it seems the implementation of burn damage was buggy it seems like the player will take burn damage from the computers flame units but the players flame units wouldn't inflict burn damage against enemy units / structures in any event i have managed to set up scenario and capture a short clip showing how it burn damage should work.

EDIT: It does work, however, I think the burn area is either too small or the life of the burn radius is too short. Cranking up those values does do burn damage... it's just flamers in both campaign and multiplayer require an enemy object to be pretty much on an exact spot at the perfect time to inflict the burn effect. Even for something like the Plasmite flamer in multiplayer.

Found another bad tile. This time in the Beta 9 map and it's hidden from view unless you destroy the warehouse built over it.

EDIT: It does work, however, I think the burn area is either too small or the life of the burn radius is too short. Cranking up those values does do burn damage... it's just flamers in both campaign and multiplayer require an enemy object to be pretty much on an exact spot at the perfect time to inflict the burn effect. Even for something like the Plasmite flamer in multiplayer.

Weird because I distinctly remember going up against enemy flame units in the past getting hit and watching as my units continue to burn as they retreat, also I'm pretty sure that if you stand in a patch of fire you should also take burn damage even if you aren't actually being directly shot at, ultimately only taking damage when you are being shot kinda defeats the purpose of flame units and effectively turns them into machine guns by a different name.

To my mind this is how i would expect flame units to work, either they do targeted damage against a specific target or they just spay fire in an ark that damages everything within that ark with the exception of friendly units / structures. Now obviously WZ flamers don't have the ability to spray an ark of fire like the C&C ones do but one would expect anything within an area that is burning to take damage with the exception of friendly units / structures.

Ultimately when it comes to flame units the C&C versions are a pretty good analogue of what i would expect the WZ ones to work like, because otherwise they may as well be removed.

[edit]
What I would perhaps do is crank up the duration of the burn, and make the area affected say a 2x2 square instead of only inflicting damage on single tile, and then if an object enters an area that is burning run a check to see if it's friendly or not, if the object belongs to the enemy then that object gets afflicted by a DOT that deal continual damage and is continually refreshed until either the area stops burning or they move out of the area that is burning.

if they move out of the area that is burning then say a 5 second count down begins and once the countdown is done the object stops burning and they stop taking damage.

you could make the default rate at which the target burns say 1 tick per second, and then could perhaps have upgrades that make the burn area bigger, make the burn duration longer, make the burn tick faster, as well as the standard stuff like increasing range, damage, and rate of fire.

Doing this would make a group of flame units pretty devastating in later levels if each time they fire they light up say a 9x9 area damaging everything in that area with the exception of friendly units / structures, which would make them brilliant for devastating enemy bases later in the game, now obviously that's a bit overpowered at the start of the game but it's something worth playing with and would help to keep flamers relevant right until the end of the game.

With this installment of the mod, flamer ROF is less, does more impact damage, cost less and produces faster, and burns longer and in a bigger area. It may not seem like much, but I am sure that with the coming research it will quickly become very powerful.

I also noticed that there is a hard-coded extra burn time done after anything is burned (when the projectile's burn is completed) and it can do decent damage to anything with bodies lacking fair thermal armor or have generally low HP. In fact, it puts a viper wheels MG with about 40% health remaining in peril and might die without a repair turret to counteract it.

Edit.
Bethrezen, here are the whole campaign scripts/maps/stats/messages as an archive of current master (relative to your version). Then you can extract camBalance into a different copy of the archive mod and load it. Don't know if that will 100% work, but if it does then you will have all the latest changes.

Bethrezen, here are the whole campaign scripts/maps/stats/messages as an archive of current master (relative to your version). Then you can extract camBalance into a different copy of the archive mod and load it. Don't know if that will 100% work, but if it does then you will have all the latest changes.

I take it you mean download and extract the campaignMaster.wz mod to a new folder than download and extract the camBalance.wz mod to the same folder to and then zip them back up and load that as a combined mod?

[edit]
ok so downloaded and unzipped the campaignMaster to a new folder, I then downloaded and unzipped the camBalance to the same folder and then zipped everything back up, and loaded that up and it sort of seems to work, but don't think its applying all the changes for example i know that you reverted the clock move, but i don't see the effect of that change now I'm guessing that's because that change is actually coded within the warzone2100_portable.exe rather than in one of the external files, either that or that change is just within another external file that wasn't included.

[edit]
Ok so think i may have just hit up on a solution to the computability issue, I just download the latest master and as expected it wouldn't load, but i then deleted the warzone2100_portable.exe from that master and replaced it with the older one from warzone2100-master-20180204-051309-ab17b9b.exe and surprise surprise the game actually loaded so it seems that what ever it is that's preventing the latest masters loading for me is within the games main exe

now obviously because there have been significant changes since warzone2100-master-20180204-051309-ab17b9b.exe simply switching out the new warzone2100_portable.exe with the old warzone2100_portable.exe isn't an option as that causes assorts of other issues.

However that got me wondering what if only the games main exe needs to be compiled for XP ?

[edit]
So just given the flamers a go and they seem better, a little weak perhaps but then we're only trying to establish a base line at this point so that's to be expected, and that situation will improve with upgrades, one minor issue i have though is that they are a little to easy to kill.

Now I know that traditionally flame units where always considered light units, but when they are going up against turrets that's a problem due to only having about half the range of machine guns, and therefore having to get much closer and being exposed to more fire for a longer period of time although i will concede that this could just be a failure of tactics on my part, however I'm in two minds about how best to handle that, I considered various ideas but I'm not really sure any of them are appropriate, what you think ?

Bethrezen wrote:
I take it you mean download and extract the campaignMaster.wz mod to a new folder than download and extract the camBalance.wz mod to the same folder to and then zip them back up and load that as a combined mod?

Yep, just overwrite the campaignMaster.wz files with the ones in camBalance.wz and then you can repackage and use it as a combined mod.

Bethrezen wrote:
Now I know that traditionally flame units where always considered light units, but when they are going up against turrets that's a problem due to only having about half the range of machine guns, and therefore having to get much closer and being exposed to more fire for a longer period of time although i will concede that this could just be a failure of tactics on my part, however I'm in two minds about how best to handle that, I considered various ideas but I'm not really sure any of them are appropriate, what you think ?

It's hard for me to gauge that since there is really no competition until Alpha 5 and by then the flamer will have the range close to a base MG with three damage upgrades and a ROF increase. And given that I would think it would be fair for them to be somewhat weak. Other unit types can be shuffled in front of the flamer units to absorb hits while the burn effect steadily decreases opponent health.

It will primarily become a supportive weapon starting around Alpha 6, cause now we got bigger and badder weapons like rockets and cannons, but it will still prove useful against cyborgs, hovers, and bunkers all the way to the end of Alpha. I don't expect Flamer to be useful starting with Beta and by then Beta 3 has Inferno which will make a flame based weapon relevant again with some much needed tweaks.

Edit:
On Alpha 2. Should we unlock a twin mg tower research item?

So far the flamer gets a range, damage, and ROF upgrade in the first base, and the twin MG unlocks the second MG damage research. Rest is the same.

Can't say I ever recall there being a twin machine gun guard tower, I take it that's a multi player research item ??

I principal I don't necessary see any issue with that as long as the computer get them as well, which would maybe necessitate upgrading some of the scav's guard towers to use machine guns instead of standard machine guns, although I did notice that the scav's machine gun guard towers sound a little different and there rate of fire seems slower then before is that because they have already been upgraded to use heavy machine guns by chance ?? that would make sense since scav's clearly already have heavy machine-gun tech as the first thing you run into on alpha 2 is 2 heavy machine-gun bunkers, or are you simply using a different sound file ??

It's hard for me to gauge that since there is really no competition until Alpha 5 and by then the flamer will have the range close to a base MG with three damage upgrades and a ROF increase. And given that I would think it would be fair for them to be somewhat weak. Other unit types can be shuffled in front of the flamer units to absorb hits while the burn effect steadily decreases opponent health.

It will primarily become a supportive weapon starting around Alpha 6, cause now we got bigger and badder weapons like rockets and cannons, but it will still prove useful against cyborgs, hovers, and bunkers all the way to the end of Alpha. I don't expect Flamer to be useful starting with Beta and by then Beta 3 has Inferno which will make a flame based weapon relevant again with some much needed tweaks.

I guess that might work if you where to have a combined group of both machine guns and flamers, not something i have tried yet, guess I'm just so used to ignoring flamers since machine guns have more health and tougher armour.

what we could maybe do is see how things play out with flamers on alpha 02 once they have there upgrades, might be a bit easier to judge then whether they need to be a bit tougher when we can see how they fair against there heavy machine-gun bunkers, although in theory flamers should marmalize them since flamers are supposed to be the weapon of choice against bunkers till you get bunker busters or well they would be if they weren't useless in unmodded games.

Bethrezen wrote:
Can't say I ever recall there being a twin machine gun guard tower, I take it that's a multi player research item ??

I principal I don't necessary see any issue with that as long as the computer get them as well, which would maybe necessitate upgrading some of the scav's guard towers to use machine guns instead of standard machine guns, although I did notice that the scav's machine gun guard towers sound a little different and there rate of fire seems slower then before is that because they have already been upgraded to use heavy machine guns by chance ?? that would make sense since scav's clearly already have heavy machine-gun tech as the first thing you run into on alpha 2 is 2 heavy machine-gun bunkers, or are you simply using a different sound file ??

Eh, I'll forego that tower since the HMG and tower is on the next mission. I think the twin MG tower only appears in Alpha 11 as a weak defense for the New Paradigm LZ. As for scavenger MG towers, Hironaru made a custom weapon for it and used a different sound. Previously, the tower weapon was the same one that the scavenger soldiers fired. The main difference is it has slower ROF, farther range, and does more damage.

Bethrezen wrote:
what we could maybe do is see how things play out with flamers on alpha 02 once they have there upgrades, might be a bit easier to judge then whether they need to be a bit tougher when we can see how they fair against there heavy machine-gun bunkers, although in theory flamers should marmalize them since flamers are supposed to be the weapon of choice against bunkers till you get bunker busters or well they would be if they weren't useless in unmodded games.

To the extent of Alpha 2 research, a flamer can knock out a scavenger bunker in about six hits. It seems to be good against everything else the scavs have, but I'll let you decide that. I had a bunch of flamers and MGs mixed together which makes short work of anything on this mission.

We should consider scavenger factory production rates and potential research to give the scavengers while we are reviewing this mission.

We should consider scavenger factory production rates and potential research to give the scavengers while we are reviewing this mission.

There is a wrf folder in this one which matches the current master so you should merge it into all of your campaignMaster.wz copies.

This still for alpha 1 only or is this for alpha 1 and 2 now? also i take it the file in the wrf folder is just updated labels.

As for scavenger MG towers, Hironaru made a custom weapon for it and used a different sound. Previously, the tower weapon was the same one that the scavenger soldiers fired. The main difference is it has slower ROF, farther range, and does more damage.

ah that explains why i was having a tougher time getting past the third base on alpha 1 the one that has the mg upgrades, the combination of less firepower, and there turrets being longer range and more powerful plus there factories spawning units roughly every 2 seconds certainly make life a little more difficult on insane, but its not to bad though ya just have to be a little more careful if you don't want to be loosing units.